When I finally meet Laura Moriarty, I’m going to complain to her about my elbow. Ever since reading her latest novel, The Chaperone, I’ve got an acute case of reader’s elbow—pain and numbness in an elbow that has been bent holding a book in the same position all night when it’s too good to put down. Join us as Moriarty visits the Central Resource Library on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012 at 7 p.m. to talk about her novel. Moriarty, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, has crafted a complex story about birth and death and time, but also about how, as our country has evolved socially, a person's opinions can evolve while that person still remains essentially who they are. Cora Carlisle is one of the most well-rounded, realistic characters in fiction I've had the pleasure of knowing. And it's not just the protagonist. Her husband, his lover, her lover, their nosy neighbors—they all seem like living, breathing people who hide behind secrets, fearing societal judgment, but who nonetheless find ways to love and live meaningful lives. And then there's the character of Louise Brooks, based on the real-life movie star. The plot revolves around the summer when Cora chaperones Brooks on a trip to New York a few years before she becomes famous. I had to keep reminding myself that I was reading historical fiction and not a biography. This book is much more complex than your typical celebrity biography, however. It's a reminder that celebrities come from backgrounds filled with sexual abuse and suffocating rules and misunderstandings just like the rest of us. This book is deep. It's about loving our enemies not because we’ve been commanded to do so, but because we know them. We attempt to understand them. We empathize with them. It's about busting out of out-dated social conventions that squeeze the happiness from our lives like the corset Cora finally learns to leave behind.